xcopperstax
Silver Member
- Joined
- Sep 3, 2018
- Messages
- 2,508
- Reaction score
- 4,873
- Golden Thread
- 0
- Location
- Massachusetts
- Detector(s) used
- Garrett AT Max
- Primary Interest:
- All Treasure Hunting
Chazy, Ny. Pound the Ground 2019. What a beautiful place and a great adventure. The Silver Bandit, myself and Ry of Love Life Metal Detecting boarded the bandit's wagon and took off for a weekend of hole digging. The drive was five or six hours and we even had to take a ferry with the wagon in it that we didn't even know about! It was my first rally and supposedly the biggest one America has seen. I was pretty eager to go to this. It's not really the kind of metal detecting I am used to, in fact it was pretty darn overwhelming to have 1000 acres to detect but also somewhere around 1000 other detectorists! We are talking square miles of land! fields as far as the eye could see. I was concerned about the amount of people but quickly realized that you could probably add several thousand more and still be comfortable detecting most of the time there was nobody besides my friends within hundreds of feet of me. After hours of finding nothing but junk we ventured over to one of the fields and a friendly local detectorist (AJAJ) was nice enough to mention that he had found some stuff in the field we were walking over to. It always helps to know that there is stuff there even if you don't find it. It was now afternoon and I was getting tired and on the verge of despair.... but never fear I had luck from my wife and baby son. I always ask them to give me the power to find something. I set the bar low at one good thing because that's all it takes to stoke the fire. It works most of the time and when it doesn't dad is not a happy detectorist.
Back to detecting. I got a pretty bad signal that sounded like garbage but there was just a high enough tone to dig it. To my surprise out popped a large copper! Brushing the dirt away I could see a right facing bust and the letters John Wilk....was it a John Wilkes Booth token? It turned out to be a John Wilkinson Iron Master token with some good detail. It's known as a "Condor Token" The front depicts John "Iron Mad" Wilkinson and the back is a naked Vulcan (roman fire god) hitting an anvil. These tokens date to 1787-1793 and it was the first time an English coin had a bust other than the king. John Wilkinson was an industrialist of the industrial revolution and reminds me of our Paul Revere. This guy made cannons and was an inventor and specialized in cast iron. Now during that time there was a severe shortage of small change in England. Picture the US mint shutting down for a few years like England did back then Could you imagine going anywhere and they simply couldn't give you any change for your dollar? That's what it was like but they didn't even have enough coins to pay people so company owners had to get creative. This token was used to pay a worker and was supposed to be equal to the English half penny. The crazy thing is that the coins where supposedly much cheaper than their value to make so he made money while paying his employees and then the token could be spent in his company stores! What a system! These were made by the ton but I've never seen one it's only something I've read about. When I showed it to some of the experts they had never seen one of these. They are not super rare but they don't seem to show up too often over here. I'm not even sure it's real because they were originally made with the name purposefully misspelled and they mixed and matched the reverses and dates. There are multiple spellings so a correct spelling as mine doesn't necessarily make it a counterfeit. There are probably as many varieties as Connecticut coppers! Collect them all. It could take a lifetime. About 5 minutes later I found a nice silver washed flat button that could date to the late 1700's to early 1800's. My day was made absolutely made!
I got to meet some of the youtube stars... The Hoover boys. Brad let me hold his gold coin! haha
Weekly Dirt guy, Quarter Hoarder and crew, Digging with Matty, Gone digging, ... Great times and I was so psyched on my coin and the good times I wanted to find Nathan from Rhode Island Relics and thank him in person for the event. Didn't find him so I'll have to meet him another time. I felt it was a well organized event and it looked like a great time was had by many people. It was cool to be a part of it, meet some new people and be in a new place!
If you are wondering what else was found it's out there: I know that a handful of War of 1812 buttons were found, Multiple CT coppers, Dandy Buttons, Spanish silver, Musket balls, bottles, Capped bust dime, seated dime and multiple other coppers and flat buttons. It wasn't easy but I suppose that's not why we do it.
Thanks for reading and shout out to anyone who was there!
Back to detecting. I got a pretty bad signal that sounded like garbage but there was just a high enough tone to dig it. To my surprise out popped a large copper! Brushing the dirt away I could see a right facing bust and the letters John Wilk....was it a John Wilkes Booth token? It turned out to be a John Wilkinson Iron Master token with some good detail. It's known as a "Condor Token" The front depicts John "Iron Mad" Wilkinson and the back is a naked Vulcan (roman fire god) hitting an anvil. These tokens date to 1787-1793 and it was the first time an English coin had a bust other than the king. John Wilkinson was an industrialist of the industrial revolution and reminds me of our Paul Revere. This guy made cannons and was an inventor and specialized in cast iron. Now during that time there was a severe shortage of small change in England. Picture the US mint shutting down for a few years like England did back then Could you imagine going anywhere and they simply couldn't give you any change for your dollar? That's what it was like but they didn't even have enough coins to pay people so company owners had to get creative. This token was used to pay a worker and was supposed to be equal to the English half penny. The crazy thing is that the coins where supposedly much cheaper than their value to make so he made money while paying his employees and then the token could be spent in his company stores! What a system! These were made by the ton but I've never seen one it's only something I've read about. When I showed it to some of the experts they had never seen one of these. They are not super rare but they don't seem to show up too often over here. I'm not even sure it's real because they were originally made with the name purposefully misspelled and they mixed and matched the reverses and dates. There are multiple spellings so a correct spelling as mine doesn't necessarily make it a counterfeit. There are probably as many varieties as Connecticut coppers! Collect them all. It could take a lifetime. About 5 minutes later I found a nice silver washed flat button that could date to the late 1700's to early 1800's. My day was made absolutely made!
I got to meet some of the youtube stars... The Hoover boys. Brad let me hold his gold coin! haha
Weekly Dirt guy, Quarter Hoarder and crew, Digging with Matty, Gone digging, ... Great times and I was so psyched on my coin and the good times I wanted to find Nathan from Rhode Island Relics and thank him in person for the event. Didn't find him so I'll have to meet him another time. I felt it was a well organized event and it looked like a great time was had by many people. It was cool to be a part of it, meet some new people and be in a new place! If you are wondering what else was found it's out there: I know that a handful of War of 1812 buttons were found, Multiple CT coppers, Dandy Buttons, Spanish silver, Musket balls, bottles, Capped bust dime, seated dime and multiple other coppers and flat buttons. It wasn't easy but I suppose that's not why we do it.
Thanks for reading and shout out to anyone who was there!
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